When Transport Canada closed Canadian skies to the Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft Wednesday morning, Alan Tambosso was a passenger on one of the planes about to leave the gate at the Calgary airport.

As news of the federal order was conveyed to the passengers destined for Palm Springs, Calif., Tambosso said everyone took the announcement well.

“The pilot came out and he said, ‘I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news. The bad news is this plane’s been grounded. The good news is we’ve got another plane we can get you on,’ ” Tambosso said from the airport Wednesday as he waited to board a different aircraft.

“I think everybody’s attitude is ‘better safe than sorry,’ and we trust in our regulators and in the people flying the planes and managing the planes and if they think there might be an issue with the plane, I’m quite happy to leave it on the ground.”

Tambosso said the cancelled flight led to at most a six-hour delay for passengers who volunteered to take a later flight on a smaller plane.

Transport Canada Minister Marc Garneau closed Canada’s skies to the Max 8 until further notice over safety concerns following the crash on Sunday of an Ethiopian Airlines flight that killed everyone on board, including 18 Canadians.

The decision to ground the planes is a precautionary move that was made after a review of all the available evidence, Garneau told a news conference Wednesday in Ottawa.

The “safety notice” means none of the aircraft — or a new version, the Max 9, which isn’t as widely used — can fly into, out of, or over Canada. The announcement was made hours before American authorities decided to follow suit, and Boeing itself recommended the global fleet of 371 planes be grounded “out of an abundance of caution.”

Danielle Frampton was getting ready to board a 10:10 a.m. flight home to Toronto when the flight was cancelled. Like Tambosso, she said she’d rather be “safe than sorry” and was fine with the decision to ground the aircraft.

“I was a little worried about it coming in,” she said as she waited in line to confirm which flight would bring her home Wednesday afternoon.

“I was fearful that I was going to be on one of those planes. But I thought if they haven’t grounded them, it’s got to be safe.”

Travellers make their way through the departures area at the Calgary International Airport Wednesday, March 13, 2019. (Jim Wells/Postmedia)

Romana Iqbal was also flying to Toronto on Wednesday but wasn’t scheduled to be on a 737 Max 8. She said she was concerned that her flight might be on one of the airplanes and had called Air Canada the day before to check.

“I just wanted to confirm that it wasn’t Max 8, because I don’t want to take the risk,” she said.

She was relieved to hear that the planes have been grounded and that she wouldn’t need to confirm what aircraft was scheduled to take her back to Calgary.

“At least I have peace of mind,” she said.

Ashid Bahl said he thinks grounding the planes is premature. Bahl was scheduled to fly to Peru on Wednesday, via Toronto.

“They should have found out, is it really the plane or is it a component of the plane that’s in question,” he said. “But, then again, people say for safety sake, do you really want to take a chance.”

Bahl, the president and founder of For the Love of Children Society of Alberta, is travelling to Cusco, Peru, and then to Guatemala to check on schools that his society has there. He said for passengers like him who were connecting to another destination, Wednesday’s cancellations are more problematic.

Bahl managed to re-book his flights through Ottawa and Montreal, but will now spend two days travelling instead of one day.

Ashid Bahl, from the For the Love of Children Society of Alberta, pictured at the Calgary International Airport Wednesday. His final destination was Lima, Peru and one of his connecting flights was cancelled because of planes being grounded, adding an entire day to his travel time. (Jim Wells/Postmedia)

Calgary Airport Authority spokesman Reid Fiest said a total of 13 flights in or out of Calgary had been cancelled as of Wednesday afternoon.

“We are working with our airline partners to help store aircraft and to help them adjust their schedules to accommodate the guests that were impacted as a result of this safety notice today,” Fiest said.

Fiest said the airlines as of Wednesday morning have been trying to react by moving different airplanes into place.

“For Calgarians, we are lucky here that we are a major hub for both WestJet and Air Canada, so they have a little bit more flexibility in terms of swapping out aircrafts, and that’s definitely what they’ve been trying to do today to keep these flights going,” he said.

Travellers make their way through the departures area at the Calgary International Airport Wednesday, March 13, 2019. (Jim Wells/Postmedia)

Air Canada said in a statement that the airline typically operates about 75 737 Max flights daily, out of a total schedule of about 1,600 daily flights system-wide.

“We are making adjustments to our schedule to minimize the disruption to customers as much as possible, by optimizing the deployment of the rest of our fleet and looking at alternative options, including accommodating customers on other airlines,” Air Canada said.

WestJet said around 1,000 guests had been affected by the federal notice as of Wednesday, and more than half of those guests were moved to same-day flight options.

More than 92 per cent of WestJet’s fleet remains in service, the airline said.

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